Digital subscriber line (“DSL”) technology is often employed in today's society to access the internet or other networks. In response to a growing popularity of DSL, many different communications equipment manufacturers are entering the DSL equipment market. As the number of such manufacturers increases, the diversity of DSL equipment also increases. Thus, interoperability between the numerous types of DSL equipment may become a challenge.
Working through the interoperability challenge is an expensive and time consuming process for a manufacturer of a digital subscriber line access multiplexer (“DSLAM”), which functions as a bridge between customer-side DSL equipment and the network. For every new type of customer-side DSL equipment that enters the market, the DSLAM manufacturer may need to update each DSLAM with a new set of communications settings in order to provide an optimal connection with the new customer-side DSL equipment. The problem of interoperability may become more complicated when some customer-side DSL equipment manufacturers attempt to cut their production costs by sacrificing interoperability. For example, if a DSL device is manufactured by manufacturer “A” who decides to cut production costs by skipping the process of determining the communications settings applicable to its DSL devices, manufacturer “A” may design its DSL devices to either identify themselves during the train-up process with a DSLAM as having been manufactured by manufacturer “B” that manufactures DSL products with communications settings known to DSLAMs. Manufacturer “A” may also design its devices so that during the train-up process, the devices merely repeat back the manufacturer identification provided by the DSLAM. These cost-saving tactics may result in connections having poor quality or failed connections, which may be detrimental to consumers.